What a New Hampshire divorce actually costs to file.
Not a range, not an estimate, not a lawyer’s blog. Every figure below is traced to a statute, a court fee schedule, or a clerk’s own published page — and linked to it.
See a different stateNew Hampshire
It costs $280.00 to file for divorce in New Hampshire. Below is where that money goes, what it does not cover, and what to do if you do not have it.
Resolved: the court’s own current schedule publishes these figures
From 23 September to 2 October 2026 this page carried a warning that the Judicial Branch’s own link served $250.00, $252.00, $125.00 and $250.00 where the page said $280.00, $282.00, $135.00 and $225.00 — and told you we could no longer stand behind our own figures. That warning was wrong. It was live for nine days and we are sorry for it.
On 2 October 2026 we downloaded the Circuit Court Filing Fees document that the Judicial Branch serves from its Forms and Fees page and read the file itself rather than an extraction of it. Every page of it is stamped 07/01/2025. Its Family Division table reads “Original Entry of All Divorce Matters without Minor Children, including cross-petitions, and Registration of Foreign Decree … $280.00” and “… with Minor Children or Parenting Matters, including cross petitions, and Registration of Foreign Decree … $282.00”, with $135.00 and $225.00 for the two post-judgment petitions and $25.00 for new orders of notice. The Family Division’s own Rule 1.3 independently sets $280.00, $135.00 and $225.00, and RSA 490:26-a, I is what gives the Supreme Court the power to set them by rule.
What we are not claiming. We cannot reconstruct what the 23 September reading saw, and we are not asserting that the Judicial Branch changed anything. We are saying only this: the file on its site on 2 October 2026 is stamped 07/01/2025 and publishes $280.00 and $282.00, and that is what to budget. Court fees do change without announcement, so call the court you are filing in before you write the check.
Worth knowing before you file. New Hampshire is one of the few states that prices a divorce differently when there are children — and the difference is two dollars.
The short version6 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Part of the fee is broken down by rule, and the extra $2.00 is in a statute.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 6
Where the money goes
The short version6 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Part of the fee is broken down by rule, and the extra $2.00 is in a statute.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 6
Part of the $280.00 is broken down, and the extra $2.00 is in a statute
The figures on the schedule are totals. Its own footnote defines “Total Fee” as “the base filing fee plus any applicable surcharges or other fees authorized by the Supreme Court and/or New Hampshire Statutes”, so nothing is added on top of them at the counter. Three parts of the fee are published.
The $2.00 difference is statutory. RSA 458-D:7, III has the court “charge and collect an additional fee of $2 from the petitioner” on the commencement of any proceeding involving the determination of parental rights and responsibilities, “including petitions for divorce with minor children”, and deposit it in the general fund. Rule 1.3(M) repeats it. That is the entire difference between $280.00 and $282.00. Note where it goes: the statute sends it to the general fund, not to the children’s program it sits beside in the law.
A share of the entry fee goes to mediation. Rule 1.3(B) directs that “18.22% of the entry fee paid in each petition and cross-petition in marital cases” be deposited into the mediation and arbitration fund, which pays the mediator where both parties are indigent. RSA 461-A:7, X is the authority for setting that percentage and caps it at 25% of the entry fee; the fund itself is RSA 490-E:4. This is an allocation of the money you hand the clerk, not an extra charge. The rule’s own parenthetical figure does not match the current fee; that is in the open questions below.
What the entry fee already buys. Rule 1.3(C)(1) prices “Original Entry of all Marital Matters, Parenting Petitions (including Order of Notice and Guardian ad Litem Fee) and Foreign Decrees” at $280.00 — so the order of notice is inside the fee. Having the papers served is not. Neither is the class, and in New Hampshire the class is compulsory if you have minor children.
What the filing fee does not cover
The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce. This is where the rest of the budget lives — and where “not published” appears most often.
Nothing extra to e-file
We looked for a portal fee and a card surcharge in New Hampshire and found neither published. That is not the same as a guarantee — clerks can charge for things they do not put on a web page — but there is no extra charge we can point you at. RSA 490:26-a, III(b) lets the Supreme Court set a service charge for card payments and the schedule sets none; the schedule says the court takes “Cash, Check, Charge, or Money Order” and will phone you to take a card. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the New Hampshire kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Petition to change a court order, with full agreementPost-judgment. | $135.00 |
| Petition to change a court order without full agreement, or petition for contemptPost-judgment. | $225.00 |
| New orders of noticePost-judgment. | $25.00 |
| Child Impact Program, if you have minor childrenA four-hour class, compulsory under RSA 458-D:2 for anyone with minor children. The court asks for the provider’s certificate of attendance and says the case may be delayed without it. The Judicial Branch publishes the cost and says it is paid to the program provider, not to the court. RSA 458-D:7, I has each person attending pay the presenter, and both parties must attend. | $85.00 |
| Having the petition served by the sheriffRSA 104:31, II sets $30 for service of a petition, and paragraph IV adds travel each way at the current federal mileage rate. Paragraph XIII lets each county convention raise that once a year by no more than the regional CPI increase, so the $30 is a statutory floor, not necessarily what your county charges today. | $30.00 + |
| A certified copy of the decree, or the divorce certificate on its ownBoth are on the Certificates & Copies page of the same schedule: $40.00 for the certified decree with any agreement, QDRO or uniform support order, $10.00 for the vital-statistics certificate alone. | $40.00 / $10.00 |
If you cannot afford to file
More people qualify than apply. If this section applies to you it is the most useful thing on this page.
New Hampshire has a way to file without paying up front
This is a normal court procedure, not a favor you have to plead for.
- What it covers: The filing fee, in whole or part.
- How it works: Written or electronic request to the court to pay a lower fee or file for free, with a statement of financial circumstances.
- The forms, by name: for a divorce in the Circuit Court Family Division the Judicial Branch’s own table names the Motion to Reduce or Eliminate Filing Fees and/or Costs (NHJB-3234-DFP-B) and the Financial Affidavit (NHJB-2065-F), filed on paper.
- The class fee is separate, and also waivable: there is a Motion to Waive/Reduce Child Impact Seminar Fee (NHJB-2345-F), and RSA 458-D:7, II requires presenters to take people on need-based assistance at reduced or no cost.
Read the official source — the Judicial Branch’s “How to Request to Pay a Lower Fee or File for Free” page, which is where that table of forms is published.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Rule 1.3(B) does not add up against the current fee. It directs that “18.22% of the entry fee paid in each petition and cross-petition in marital cases ($41.00)” go to the mediation and arbitration fund. But 18.22% of the current $280.00 entry fee is $51.02, and $41.00 is 18.22% of $225.00 — an older entry fee. The rule does not say which figure governs and we are not going to guess. Either way the money is inside the $280.00 rather than added to it, and either way it is under the 25% ceiling in RSA 461-A:7, X.
- What the Child Impact Program costs if you cannot pay $85.00. RSA 458-D:7, II requires presenters to take recipients of need-based assistance at reduced or no cost, and the Judicial Branch says to ask the provider. Neither publishes what the reduced figure is.
- What your county’s sheriff charges today. RSA 104:31, XIII lets each county convention raise the $30 service fee once a year by up to the regional CPI increase. No statewide list of the current county figures is published, so we show the statutory floor and say that it is one.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. These three are real limits on what New Hampshire’s own sources publish, not omissions on our part. The filing fee is no longer one of them: we have read the schedule, the rule and the statute, and we can produce all three.
How we know this
Every figure on this page came from a statute, a state court system, or a clerk’s own published fee schedule — never a law firm’s blog, a legal-forms company, or a fee aggregator. Where a state publishes no date on its fee schedule, we say so rather than implying the number is current. Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
Court fees change, and they change without announcement. Confirm with your clerk before you write the check.
What people actually report paying
Everything above is the filing fee, traced to the statute. It is also the smallest number in a divorce. Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
We read hundreds of public accounts from people who have been through it. Three findings held up across nearly all of them:
- The total is bimodal, not an average. Self-filers cluster around $300–$500. Anyone with two lawyers and a real disagreement clusters around $20,000–$30,000. Almost nobody reports the middle, so “the average divorce costs X” describes almost no actual divorce.
- Cost is driven by the other person’s conduct, not by how complicated your assets are. People with millions who agreed to split evenly reported paying filing fees only. People with one house and one child reported $45,000 because the case got dragged out.
- Every large surprise is a third professional. The guardian ad litem, the custody evaluator, the forensic accountant, the QDRO preparer — all billed separately from both lawyers, and often introduced by the court before anyone had budgeted for one.
These are anecdotes, not prices. People post about a divorce cost when the number shocked them, so the high figures are heavily over-represented and the ordinary divorce is nearly invisible. Every figure on the full page is labeled with how many people reported it.
See what people report paying →Know someone in New Hampshire staring at this number?
A straight answer about money is more useful than most advice, and it costs nothing to pass along. Nothing here asks for their real name, and nobody finds out they looked.
Now the part the fees don’t cover
The forms, the deadlines, the residency rule, and what actually happens next.
Or find someone to help
New Hampshire attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.
The rest of what we have written about New Hampshire. Every figure is quoted from New Hampshire’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in New Hampshire
Short answers to what people ask most about this number. Everything here is drawn from the same sources as the figures above.
How much does it cost to file for divorce in New Hampshire?
$280 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $280.00 without minor children / $282.00 with minor children or parenting matters. Every figure on this page is traced to New Hampshire’s own statute or its courts’ published fee schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Is the divorce filing fee the same in every New Hampshire county?
Yes. New Hampshire sets the filing fee statewide, so the figure is the same whichever county you file in. It is $280.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in New Hampshire?
No, and it is the small number. The filing fee is what it costs to open the case. Serving the papers, any required parenting class, copies and certifications, an attorney if you use one, and the cost of running two households instead of one are all separate — and together they are many times larger. The sections above set out what this figure does and does not buy.
What if I cannot afford the filing fee in New Hampshire?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what New Hampshire requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this New Hampshire figure, and where does it come from?
It is quoted from the court’s own published schedule or the statute that sets it, with the date it was last checked shown on the page. Where a figure could not be confirmed from an official source, this site says so rather than estimating — and where a number could only be reached by arithmetic rather than read off a published schedule, it is left out rather than presented as published. That rule is why some rows here say “not published” instead of carrying a tidy figure, and it is the whole basis on which these pages can be reproduced. The full fifty-state comparison is at thecusp.app/divorce-costs/, free to reproduce under the license published there.
Choosing an agent for a divorce sale is a different problem from choosing one for an ordinary sale: who the agent is allowed to talk to, who has to sign, what happens when one of you will not, and the three separate conflicts of interest that come up when one spouse found the agent first. How to choose a real estate agent for a divorce sale sets out what to ask, and how to check a credential yourself — no divorce credential is official with the National Association of Realtors.
The Cusp receives a referral fee from agents it vets and trains to handle divorce clients.